"Well, it's a word which was impressed on my memory ... a word which was uttered in circumstances——"
"What circumstances, Dorothy?"
She explained slowly with a thoughtful air:
"Think a minute, Saint-Quentin. I told you that my father died of his wounds, at the beginning of the war, in a hospital near Chartres. I had been summoned; but I did not arrive in time.... But two wounded men, who occupied the beds next to his in the ward, told me that during his last hours he never stopped repeating the same word again and again: 'Roborey ... Roborey.' It came like a litany, unceasingly, and as if it weighed on his mind. Even when he was dying he still uttered the word: 'Roborey ... Roborey.'"
"Yes," said Saint-Quentin. "I remember.... You did tell me about it."
"Ever since then I have been asking myself what it meant and by what memory my poor father was obsessed at the time of his death. It was, apparently, more than an obsession ... it was a terror ... a dread. Why? I have never been able to find the explanation of it. So now you understand, Saint-Quentin, on seeing this name ... written there, staring me in the face ... on learning that there was a château of that name...."
Saint-Quentin was frightened:
"You never mean to go there, do you?"
"Why not?"
"It's madness, Dorothy!"